Rice Cooker Recipes

[XERTYX]

So yesterday I got a craving for some honey baked ham. I had some ham, and some dark brown sugar.

I tried making it in the rice cooker as an experiment. I still dont have a kill-a-watt meter, but I wanted to get an idea of how many watt hours it would use.

The first batch I layered in the ham slices and sprinkled with brown sugar then added some water.

That took 45 minutes. Way too long. It's a 300 watt cooker and IF it did run at full power the whole time 45÷60=0.75h. 0.75h*300w=225wh

I made some more this morning. Same procedure except I just added a few drops of juices from the pouch of ham. The ham itself is "water added" so a fair amount cooks out of it anyway.

This took 26 minutes. Still assuming it runs at 300w the whole time. 26÷60= 0.4333h. 0.44h*300w=132wh

That's a lot better. And the ham is pretty tasty. Reminds me of honey baked ham, but at hamburger helper prices. Craving satisfied. Additional recipe for the rice cooker.

 

[XERTYX]

*BUMP*

Well I have a great opportunity to test out my rice cooker in the van. No shore power. Just solar and my 27DC walmart battery.

I'm off grid now for over 2 weeks. The only thing is that I kept fartin around saying I'd try and find my old inverter. Maybe I will. Last time I looked for it I came up empty handed. So I went on amazon and got a bargain basement 400w 800w peak modified sine wave inverter. 

It's supposed to be here Sunday. As well as my bargain basement clone of a hotlogic mini 12v version. I actually looked around for watt hour measurements for cooking rice. I found a video that looks just like my model rated for 300w just like mine. The guy cooked rice thru a killawatt meter. 127wh he came up with after like 30m. So about what I thought. A little lower than 300w*0.5h but pretty close. He did note that it drew 307w at its peak.

So here pretty soon I'll give it a go and let yall know. I would have hoped to run it on the LOAD of my charge controller so I could measure it but I have a 20A/260w controller so I guess not.

Assuming that I dont kill my battery or burn anything down I'm planning to post some recipes next week. The plan for next week is to use only the rice cooker and hotlogic knock off. 

Give my butane stove a breather. Stay tuned.

 

[hugemoth]

Interesting video about how rice cookers work.



I use one on a single group 29 Walmart battery and a 750 watt HF inverter. Works fine.

The only things I cook are plain rice or quinoa.

 

[XERTYX]

I've actually seen that video before. It is very interesting. Before I saw that video I did know that it had a thermostat I just didnt know it was a mechanical one. Pretty darn cool using magnets that lose their magnetism just above the boiling temp of water.

So I assume you have solar to charge your 29DC battery. Do you run the rice cooker first thing in the morning? While the sun is on your panels? Later in the day?

 

[wayne49]

My rice cooker, purchased at Smith's in Pahrump quite a while back, uses 320W according to Kill-A-Watt, is rated at 350W.

My uses:
Heats soup very quickly. Lowest draw.
Cook pasta and rice. The heaviest draw is rigatoni pasta that requires 12 minutes of boiling.

I use it only when the bank is at 100% and the solar will still be capable of replenishing the bank. I switched from hot suppers to hot lunches. I can go without hot food, but I can't go without refrigeration.

 

[XERTYX]

Groovy. Thanks for the feedback. Where I am now (on my family's property) I move the van past the trees in the AM to get early morning sun and then back to where it was after about 1-2PM as that area will be in the shade by 3ish.

I'm thinking the best time to run mine would be around 11am as by then I've already put at least 100 watt hours back in generally and the 200 watts of solar I have would help cushion the blow. Then it has the rest of the day to fill back up.

I'm having reservations about using mine once I'm at 100% because I dont want to go into the overnight period with a low battery. (I do have a fridge as well as leaving my phone on charge all night)

Once santan solar opens their new location in Savannah Ga I may try and upgrade my panels if they offer them as cheap as the AZ location. I'd love to just be able to cook rice while my batteries are in float. I almost bought a 12v rice cooker that uses 100 watts allegedly, but I opted for an inverter instead.

 

[XERTYX]

Well I just made some rice with my snazzy new inverter and the rice cooker.

I got a little concerned with how low the voltage was dropping while it was cooking but I think it was fine. I let it replenish about 80 watt hours of charge into the battery before I switched it on and wouldnt you know as soon as I did it got cloudy again. Haha. For the most part though they were passing clouds and I was seeing around 120ish watts from the solar while it was running.

Later today once it goes into float mode I'll have a better idea of how many watt hours it used. It ran for about 30 mins and is a 300 watt cooker so about 150wh the average solar output was maybe 100w so I'd imagine about 100wh came out of the battery. I'll have a look at the app once its charged.

So rice for lunch and the rest goes in the fridge for tomorrow when I test out how well my 45 watt DC "hotlogic mini" knock off cooker can warm it back up.

 

[MGfromBC]

For the past few years I've done almost all of my cooking in a rice cooker. V8 juice, water, whatever else fits. I keep the big V8 bottles in the fridge when I'm home. I take the little V8 cans with me on the road.

MG

 

[XERTYX]

I've experimented with the quite a bit, but this was the acid test. Will my solar system blow up? Haha. The rice was a little dry but that was user error. I couldn't find the measuring cup and I used the last of the bag of jasmine rice anyway so it wasnt exact. I just sorta eyeballed it.

I gotta go out tomorrow to get some stuff and I'll probably grab 18 eggs and boil some in the rice cooker. Maybe get some soups as well.